Reviews

Father dies and nobody cares. Eric, who's been in one episode, sets off so much sorrow for no discernible reason.

And then people moan and complain they don't know if they want to leave? "Oh no! What if the radio doesn't work? People will be depressed!" They aren't depressed being stuck in a town?

"Why bother with the radio? I'll play make believe." You've been stuck here for less than three years in this place that doesn't make any sense, and you're poo-pooing a radio idea? Has it been done before? No? Then shut up!

"I think it's time we stop piecing together these drawings that are obviously a puzzle and play a dumb mindfulness game."

The writing for this show is SO. BAD.

This writing would galvanize execs into thinking writers CAN be replaced by AI. Such stuff, bad exposition and such bad actors. The Chinese guy with broken English dementia is especially cringe-worthy.

I mean you start the show off with a ghost who barely has to say three sentences to trick a dumb girl into letting her in. It would've been better to NOT show what happens at night and let us find out the hard way like our out of towners do.

And then you spend the rest of the show putting hooks at the end of each episode, but near zero pay offs. This is basic b mystery material and I'm just gonna judge everyone who recommends this show as an idiot.

Wow... that other user review for this episode is, um, interesting. Though I guess I shouldn't expect anything less from this site's userbase. I mean, personally I'd argue pop country or Christian rock is the worst sound in the world, but whatever. Anyways, great episode. Rap music is great. As far as I'm concerned this season's been all bangers.

Lol, as you can see from the reviews, this triggered some trolls, just as the theme says. Politics have always been in the animaniacs, and as the characters and writing both grew up, so did their politics. It seems some of the older viewers didn't grow with it.

Womanizing is bad, and always felt like an awkward holdover from the looney toons that inspired the warners.

Satirizing world leaders has also been done since the original (literally "bill clinton plays the sax" in the intro), it seems some people just don't like seeing their world ('dear') leader made fun of.

I could go on, but what's the point? The trolls will say it's so passe, but animaniacs did meta first.

Keep crying, you right-winged babies. Animaniacs are back and better than ever. Each "not helpful" review is a baby tear from your eyes for me to feast on. Nomnomnomnom.

I'm really trying to like this show. It's slim-pickings for new content during quarantine, and I love me a good thriller, but is just... barely crawling along, and this episode barely redeemed itself with its final shot that excused the protagonist and her otherwise stubbornly-stupid behavior.

SO MANY SIGNS telling you to get out, and you stay? No cell reception? Obviously hostile and racist residents? C'mon. C'mon. C'mon. Just leave.

Naomie Harris & Jude Law are trying their darnedest (not to mention the rest of the cast), but these writers are squandering this and botching it big time.

Yikes. Compare the VFX in this to the VFX of Venom, then go look at the reviews between the two and tell me that racism wasn't involved. A lot of fragile viewers just don't like that a strong cast of black people made their own superhero movie.

Yes, the VFX has some weak moments, but overall there isn't anything more "recycled" here than there is in any other superhero movie.

It's very good. Not 10/10 good, but anything to offset the losers who not only felt obliged to write their empty opinions of this movie, but also downvote all of the positive reviews beyond the negative ones.

Oh man, the only thing greater than this movie was how many people it triggered. TWO black love interests? An Asian friend? Acknowledgement of slavery as building American monuments? And THIS is what people are calling "stale?" I'm sorry, where was any of this- or the comedy- in the previous films? Not there.

Look at how uniform the bad reviews have been upvoted, and how uniform the good ones have been downvoted. Someone really hates this movie, and REALLY wants everyone to see it. Ha! What a loser.

This movie rocked. The critics loved it. And opened top at box office. Dab on it.

The story feels like a stitched-together set of jokes that never gets around to giving anyone any depth, so you don't really care about their perils as they occur on account you don't really know them well enough to care.

Pirate Captain, for example, makes foolish choices that he only reflects on after being shamed-- no inner spark or heuristic triggered to get him there, which isn't quite the right lesson to teach through a family picture. There were opportunities to teach kids about empathy, chosen family, etc., but it scraps that in favor for jokes and gags that end as fast as they started.

The visual gags are delightful, the body language of the characters is hilarious in and of itself, and though there are too many nods to the audience (not 10 minutes go by where someone isn't just doing something for the viewer's sake), they're excusably charming regardless.

I would recommend this movie enough to anyone who just wants to see some charming stop motion animation and beautiful character designs, I just would not tel them to expect it to be at the same caliber as Aardman's other work.

While most audiences of the modern era may understandably dismiss Say Anything as a boring, uneventful romantic comedy movie that doesn't result in much, what they might not recognize is that-- in its heyday-- it was a bold and refreshing step off the beaten path that made a deer trail which has been followed enough to've become the well paved trail it is today.

Rather than tell a wild party tale that romanticizes and exaggerates high school or college antics in a problematic manner like John Hughes had been doing, Say Anything took a more relaxed, casual approach that involves a couple communicating with one another about each other's ambitions and feelings about life. Sure it's naive, but that's kind of the point of what's been sussed out here; that life isn't an easy going coming-of-life movie, and that things are complex.

The problem is the entire experience is put on rails. Lloyd and Diane both have one-track minds for one another, all of Lloyds friends have one-track minds for Lloyd, Diane's dad cares only for Diane. It's one thing for Lloyd and Diane having to come to terms with how life won't work out how they want it to-- but for EVERYONE ELSE in the story to naively follow along and wonder the same things themselves for these two characters-- and not have lives of their own (except maybe Corey, for two seconds)--

Still though, it's a delightful vignette into the world of 1989, and was a much needed baby step to get romcoms to where they are today (which are admittedly absent nowadays and have since become serial drama TV shows... which is fine). Much like a lot of cinema over time, I can see why it was a big deal for its day, sure it has since gotten muted and done better, but that will never detract from what it did for its genre.

The show has a lot of elements for a good story, but the main character is insufferably naive with little signs of development. I read the book before the show kicked off, and the book had written comparable moments that are in the show, but with a self-awareness to them that's completely absent here. I recognize character depth comes with time, but we're on two seasons now and the main character is just now realizing her boyfriend (as lovable as the actor is) isn't good for her? C'mon.

Coupled with that, her friends have more character than her, but are barely given any screen time and are treated like fodder. This wouldn't be so noticeably egregious if they weren't minorities; this is improved somewhat in Season 2, but just barely.

And the city itself becomes an overdone gimmick for the stories, written with the disconnect of a tourist who read about it in a book instead of a local who's constantly surrounded by it. It's just Portland. It isn't your embracive, kooky fantasy land that has hip stuff happening all the time; it's a gentrified, NIMBY-filed city with narcissists who treat the microcosm of progressiveness around them like a permission slip to ignore having to do any further political activism.

And I suppose that's my biggest beef with the show, it just feels like it was written in a narcissist's bubble. It's OK to write a show about a narcissist-- there are many-- but when both the character AND the writers stay within themselves, the story feels unendurably claustrophobic and closed-minded, even when it's trying its darnedest not to be.

Whenever I'm watching comedians for the first time, I find I'm often waiting for the other shoe to drop. When are they going to crack that out-of-touch, offensive, or just terrible bomb of a joke?

I did not expect shoes to drop with Michelle; I enjoyed Nice Lady, I enjoyed her Netflix show, I enjoyed her press correspondence dinner. This stand-up, for whatever reason, Michelle didn't exactly drop some shoes, she just kinda cracked some jokes that didn't need to be cracked.

The opener joke, for example, goes into assault, and how we need to blur the lines for what counts as it for animals versus humans. The joke ends with her holding down an animal against their will while another animal mates with it while everyone laughs... okay.

Another joke details how she prefers massages from illegal immigrants since their massages are angrier for having to do their job for her benefit.

Then there's the joke about how the "woke" crowd needs to "go back to sleep" for they are benefiting off the slave labor of their iPhones... I guess that's how criticism works, eh? Can't criticize something you have little choice but to participate in?

The rest of the special is alright, she cracks some other tried and true jokes, makes some good observations about sexism and gender equality, but by the end, I was worried. And it didn't help she then went onto Rogan's show and was making some kinda comments less than ten minutes in about Chinese people.

Punch up, Michelle. Like maybe at gullible, upper class women who get into crystals and goop.

The first half is a wonderful journey through the perilous anxieties one has before deciding whether or not to have kids, and is very deep and introspective. Mike lays out all the reasons you shouldn't have kids, and they're all right.

But then he's countered with "but you'd be a good dad," and that's that, he has a kid.

This is where the disconnect happened for me, and is where I just felt disappointment. It's as if Mike spends the rest of the bit ignoring what he just talked about, and goes into how miserable of a parent he is without any self-reflection as to maybe he shouldn't have had kids.

It's not just Mike, we all need to consider that maybe we shouldn't have kids until we sort ourselves out: climate change, concentration of wealth, and all the existential threats coming down the pipe are all reasons why you should not have your own kids. You should adopt or foster. Sorry you miss out on what could've been, but such is life.

I'll be curious to revisit Mike years later to see if he's still miserable. Good luck. You have my empathy, but not my endorsement.

I really wanted to like this movie. Something I'd noticed about all the other negative reviews is that they start off with something comparing it to the original-- I figured I hadn't seen the original for quite some time, so maybe I won't care or notice.

I didn't care or notice, this movie just sucked on its own two feet.

It starts off strong, with an earnestly creative attempt to incorporate ballet with horror, but from there somehow manages to stumble its way into where it goes; a flat, empty, sloppily-told story that just sort of... ends.

There were a few telling signs this movie wasn't going to be good: Tom Yorke, who I love in Radiohead, does NOT FIT into this movie's tone whatsoever. OK Tom, you want to follow your bandmates into their soundtrack careers? That's OK, but they don't SING, and neither should YOU when doing a soundtrack. Maybe once during the closing credits, sure-- but this was just too much.

Next was the jarring direction and editing. I get movies wanting to pay an homage to their predecessors, but there are some things that just should never come back, or if they do come back, recognize why they were left behind:

Crash zooms. Jarring camera moves in the middle of a boring conversation. Needless edits mid-sentence. Digitally-slowed down footage. Digitally echo'd footage. And you're telling all this during an abstracted, obfuscated story?

And then comes the last part, which I guess this is a spoiler that I wish I had known that has surprisingly nothing to do with the story: Tilda Swinton plays two characters, one of which is a dude for no other reason than because she and the director said it felt right in a movie starring nothing but women, which... OK. Seems weird to make that the line you draw in the sand when both the director and writers are mostly men, and you have Tom Yorke doing the soundtrack. So I was super distracted or kept trying to piece together what line was going to up between her two characters only for there to've never been one.

It's a laughably bad movie by the end of it, and I'm so glad they told me how many acts are in it at the beginning, so that I didn't have to check my watch to see how much was left.

This was almost great. The directing, the acting, the setting, the music, all stellar in their usage. All of its strengths really came close to making up for what this movie lacks the most: organic, well-paced writing.

For example, there is a scene wherein the protagonist is visiting the funeral of an acquaintance; what is the first thing the protagonist does at this funeral? Make a b-line directly to the open casket and try to take a gander at the deceased's face. No hellos or greetings or nothing, just rudely goes there and does her biz. Decisions like this are made repeatedly, with little explanation to the audience when doing so.

Normally this would be fine, I don't need everything spoon-fed to me, and often prefer it isn't, but the story has little in the way of an end goal, so it's not just that it isn't spoon-feeding you, it's not feeding you at all.

Get this same team together, make another movie, just get another writer, and get some more solid substance... preferably without such a hole.

What a fresh, inventive take on the plight of the proletariat. This movie just takes off at full speed and doesn't slow down, obviously leaving a lot of other reviewers in its wake. Well they can sod off, because Sorry to Bother You is a shout out to the strugglers, the morally-sound, and the folks who are just trying to get by without selling themselves out. Anyone who doesn't connect with the message or comedy is either a prude or too high up on their food chains to understand.

This movie takes an infamous curveball turn 3/4s of the way through, which is where a lot of people got lost if they weren't lost already-- I did not get lost, but I must admit the direction/editing does get a liiiiiiitle bumpy. It's almost as if all the horsepower got put in the first half and got over-ambitious by the second half that it didn't really flesh things out as much. That or the budget just really hamstrung the production from taking off at full-blast.

Either way, the fresh performances, dialogue, and DIRECTION (11 out of 10 in my book) forgive the shortcomings by a long shot. I await Boot's next work with baited breath as Sorry to Bother You was not a bother at all.

Anyone seeing this episode in today's late-stage capitalist society can really connect the haunting parallels between what this episode predicts and where society is headed. Sadly, even this dystopian depiction of where things lead us to may have too optimist of an idea as to how we'll ever get kicked out of our mindset (if ever). Things have already been in the state they are in this episode with refugee camps and homelessness reaching epidemic levels, and nobody's been galvanized into doing anything about it.

Regardless, this episode and the one before it touch upon classicism and the lack of empathy between the lower and upper class divide, worsened by the upper class making themselves as remote from the lower class as possible. This is a real concept that exists, and what this episode does better than most others is it doesn't depict all of the homeless people as sideshows in a circus with a human interior-- but rather humans first, and their downfalls next.

Anyone who says this episode is "preachy" is either likely not in the demographic the message is intended for, or sadly is lacking the empathy to consider the message delivered (which, frankly, I'm surprised they're watching Deep Space Nine at all, as it's all about considering things from other points of view).

Once this message is delivered and taken home to the heart of society, only then can we ever hope to get anywhere near what Star Trek as a whole hopes to take us to.

This was garbage.

There are so many 1:1 rip off shots and moments throughout this movie, it is a Frankensteind corpse of all the Jurassic Park moments before it. People gobble it up because the VFX makes it pretty, there's dinosaurs, if you saw it on the big screen it sells the imagery more, and the actors are supposed to bring charisma, but when the writing is just this bad and the directing is this bland, at some point you recognize the spices just can't mask the boring overcooked meat that is the story.

I feel obliged to see some movies because, even if they get negative reviews, there's always a nagging voice in the back of my head that says "how can something with all of these ingredients (specifically dinosaurs) be terrible?" Well that voice will get silenced if enough installments of things with those ingredients keep falling short, and it's fallen short this time and the last.

Let this franchise die. There's no spirit behind it. It just comes around every couple of years like a Christmas bonus for the producers and execs at the top because kids. Let the lightning strike itself into some other corpse lifted from some other castle, this one's done.

So like... look at how high the rating is for this movie based on user reviews, and then go look at how high the rating is for the Ghostbusters remake, then go watch those movies back-to-back, and tell me Ghostbusters isn't better than this garbage.

People like this movie because they either like Tom Hardy, or have a juvenile sense of humor, or are from China (who funded this movie, hi Tencent sockpuppet reviewers!). The dialogue is ridiculous. The jokes all fall flatter than a pancake. The characters care next to nothing about the seriousness of the events unfolding around them. It's bad.

This is a bad movie.

Even the people who like it say to turn your brain off. Which I'm willing to do half the time, but not when the movie is THIS uninspired. Maybe if it had more fun, maybe if the dialogue wasn't so corny, maybe if the visual effects weren't so half-assed, but all those factors fall short of something better. Coupled with the fact this is produced by Tencent, and I'm just left with a rotten taste in my mouth.

The character design was on-point. That's the one nice thing to say about this movie.

Everything else was so forgettable and bland that it's like I had a memory lapse when I try to think back on any resonating impression or feelings I'd had about it, or than that it was a big waste of time.

If I ever meet someone who says they loved this movie, that is going to be a big grain of salt for my interactions with them moving forward.

Good god, what is wrong with producers when they think this movie isn't worth making? China needs to get over itself and the US needs to stop being so friggin' and closed-minded with what people want to see in their theaters.

This story is absolutely deserving of an audience, and combines together through a beautiful lens a clashing of Western & Eastern philosophies of life that really should be examined.

Americans have an idea of preserving one's independence and pressing back against being a cog in a machine, while China embraces being a cog and working together to ensure each other's safety and well-being. Both are philosophies that deserve meditation, and this movie does just that, while centering it around the touching story in the center between a grandmother and her family.

I cannot give this movie enough praise. Each moment, each shot, each sound, each setting, each performance-- all orchestrated together seamlessly, giving the viewer an impartially guided experience full of subtle subtext and nuance that, if it doesn't get caught by the viewer, they at least get a gorgeous shot to enjoy.

I was hesitant to give this movie ten stars, as I typically reserve that for movies that I would undoubtedly purchase and watch on repeat, but I could see myself watching this again and being in the mood for its ride. It's a bittersweet odyssey that dips and rises multiple times through darkness and light, all the while keeping you comforted with humor and grace-- almost like a grandmother should.

Ten stars for The Farewell. I will visit it again and again as I would my grandmother.

This movie was just delightful, and I'm sure that's not the adjective you want to see used to describe what's supposed to be a horror movie, but whatever.

I was delighted to see these character's dynamics, I was delighted to see the actors do a wonderful job with their roles, I was delighted to see the story organically unfold the spooks that the movie embarked down.

The story does a wonderful job alluding to the theme of its time, and nobody feels "stupid" as they do in other horror films (though you, as the audience, still get to know better). I especially loved the dialogue, and how each moment segued to the next without any sort of jarring-ness. It does get a little slow 3/4s through the movie (as most horrors do) when things are getting pieced together, but aside from that, golden.

The biggest, disappointing fault with this movie is how it was filmed, along with its direction.

The direction pulls too many moments that adhere to "safe" scary storytelling instead of something that would've been way better. For example: a character sees a creature coming toward them at the end of the hall: KEEP THE CAMERA IN THE CHARACTER'S POV, do NOT show an extreme close-up of the creature, closer than the character is capable of, giving away the entire design of the creature and its mystery. SO MANY CLOSE-UPS of creatures that the character, in that moment, was not privy to. Had the camera kept the creature out of focus, slowly-meandering toward the main character, we'd have had a good spook on our hands, but instead we're left with a dry, "safe," homogenized spook experience.

The photography was equally disappointingly "safe" in that it was too bright throughout the entire movie. A corn field at night, a haunted house at night, a dark archive room of a hospital-- all were lit in the movie with big blue background lights like we were back in 90's filmmaking. Had they shot this like Signs or The Conjuring, we'd have been in spook-central.

One other slight disappointment-- but I think this just comes with the territory-- was the CG. I wish they'd have just gotten a flexible acrobat for one of the monsters, I wish they'd have gotten a practical effects artist to make a writhing leg ooze from a sore, I wish for many more practical effects to keep me immersed in stead of kick me out of the moment.

BUT this was a PG-13 movie based on a short story book aimed at kids, so I feel all of these criticisms should maybe back-off a little, and is why I'm giving this a little higher rating than I would something more aimed at adults. It was still delightful, and I still enjoyed the movie, and I would absolutely use this movie to indoctrinate kids into horror, as it did a wonderful job of it.

First off, these two child actors were phenomenal. I hope that-- if they are aware of the controversy around this movie-- none of it falls on them. I wish them the best of luck with their acting careers.

What to do with this movie? As with most true crime, there's always an ethical question lingering in the background of whether it was worth it to tell this story for an audience to consume it. This case was unique in that these two kids were tried as adults, and if you were to only ever see that on paper, you'd probably have a lot of questions, or you'd probably dismiss everyone involved as monsters.

And that's what feels like the question proposed to you, the audience; are these kids monsters and horrible people?

My answer is: yeah. I did not have much empathy for them. They both knew what they were doing in this tragedy, so they both need to pay the price. It's a story of those terrible fringe, edge cases where the parties involved fall right on the inner outlines of crime and punishment, and we get to examine what happens to people like them. What factors were involved, what their mentality was, what the crime was, etc..

While others touch on the point that little-to-no-attention was given to the victim or his family, to me it feels like the whole movie did: with the flashbacks in place and the alluding to how many people could've stepped in to do something about this, it feels like the victim's story was turned into a message of awareness: be aware if your kids are exhibiting this type of behavior, be aware if they are hanging out with others doing these types of things, be aware that this exists, because if you don't, we might lose another child.

I hope the worst is behind Denise. I hope these two boys seek help. And may James Bulger rest in peace.

I'm glad an old white dude got to rob banks mostly unperturbed for an extended period of time. I'm glad he made people smile while he did it and them not feel too frightened by the experience. I'm glad he got the chance to feel alive and not feel like a wage slave.

I get why he did it, I just don't care any more than a "...good for him." as a response.

There is nothing wrong with the execution of this story. Redford and Spacek are delightful. It is shot on beautiful 16mm film. The colors, the direction, the soundtrack-- all stellar.

But I mean... why tell this story? Who saw a man robbing a banks with a smile and asked "why is he doing that?" I'm not sure. But you have your answer with this movie, and... well, it's about as exciting as the title implies.

If you want to relax, watch this movie.If you want something insightful, moving, dramatic, or inspire any feeling in you whatsoever, maybe go watch something else.